It is generally acknowledged that we won’t get a carbon tax until 2013 and that we should focus our efforts until then on building the movement. It is also a given that the new Congress will try to prevent the EPA from doing their job and we will have to put substantial effort into defending a law passed by Richard Nixon. Trying to end subsidies for fossil fuels is also a worthwhile goal in this Congress; one that will at least expose the hypocrisy of the free market cultists.
I agree with all of that completely, but I’d like to suggest another modest legislative goal for the 112th Congress: Get
young people banned from observing sessions of Congress.
Wait, wait, wait: please keep reading.
I was recently talking with a student at Wesleyan University who agreed with me about the need for civil disobedience in the climate movement, but lamented that our task is harder than that of the civil rights movement because our target isn’t as clear. With the civil rights movement, she argued, it was easy to see how to take direct action against the problem of segregated lunch counters or bus stations. Go to the place where you’re not supposed to sit, and sit. With the climate crisis, on the other hand, where is the opportunity for resistance?
Perhaps our solutions are limited by our perspective on the problem. If the problem is that there are too many parts carbon dioxide per million particles in the atmosphere, then the target for action is indeed elusive and enigmatic. But if the real problem is that those whose future is being sacrificed (young people) don’t have a voice where the decisions about that future are being made (Congress), then the appropriate response becomes a little more obvious. Go to the place where you’re not supposed to have a voice, and make your voice heard.
Now, let’s be reasonable about this goal. If a young person stands up in the balcony of a congressional session and says, “It’s my future you’re sacrificing by turning your backs on the moral imperative of defending a livable climate,” it will be a minor distraction that will be quickly forgotten after the Capitol Police drag the young truth-teller out. When someone stands up after him to say, “History will remember that you sold our survival for campaign contributions,” she will likely earn a condescending and trivial mention in the media to go along with her citation. If a dozen young people make their voices heard that day before taking “free public transportation” to the nearest police station, there might even be a headline that collects hateful comments about naive, spoiled, elitist blah blah blahs.
As with most actions, what happens the next day will determine everything. If twice as many folks rise up the next day to speak truth to power, things will start getting interesting. After more and more young people each day raise their voices to proclaim their right to the same planet their parents had, people around the country will finally start to believe in the existence of a climate movement. When those first trendsetting students go back a second, third or fourth time to throw themselves into the gears of the machine, the “naive and spoiled” criticisms will fall from their backs like blackbirds from the Arkansas sky.
Most importantly, when those uninvited voices prove so persistent and multiplicative that they seriously hinder the 112th Congress’s God-given right to sell the country to the highest bidder, Congress will have to act. If they truly are as simple-minded and reactionary as they pretend to be, they might even give us exactly what we want and ban people under age 30 (plus Ashley Anderson) from observing sessions of Congress.
Why is that exactly what we want? Because it forces Congress to admit reality. The reality of climate change is that it is a war against the young. But it doesn’t look or feel like a war to most people. It doesn’t fit the picture of what we think of as war. When Congress admits that they can only continue doing what they’re doing by preventing young people from watching, it is a clear statement that the status quo is only possible by waging war against the young. Thus, these waves of action force Congress to either end the war against the young, or start waging it openly.
Of course, it is not only young people with the motivation or the ability to raise their voices in defense of a livable future. So once Congress is forced to wage that war more openly, perhaps our parents will start raising their voices as well. At some point our leaders will have to admit that the status quo is a war against the living.
It’s hard to imagine that there are enough engaged, courageous people in this country to make any of this a reality. The vast majority of available media provides plenty of evidence of the superficiality and selfishness that dominates our culture. It almost seems silly to hold on to a genuine faith in each other. But I suspect we’re approaching a time when the only reason to keep moving forward will be an unreasonable faith in the greatness of humanity.
Even now, the reasonable and pragmatic thing is probably to join up with a big corporation and protect you and yours. Holding on to our humanity may require an unreasonable morality. Or perhaps that’s how it’s always been. Perhaps all bold acts of sacrifice have required an unreasonable faith in each other.
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